Remember Saturday, when I Mugged from the road? I'm back on the road, and the Brewers are still losing. I'm sorry this Mug is late, but breakfast closed at 9, so it took full focus to finish 3 laps in time.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score
BDD Recaps

Notable by their absence yesterday: Prince Fielder, Corey Hart and Jason Kendall. Apparently it was just a scheduled off day for almost half the starting position players, though.

The Yost Infection says it's time for a managerial change, even though most of this team's problems aren't Ned's fault. The time for a change was September of last year. The story now is that it hasn't happened yet.

Speaking of looming decisions, Derrick Turnbow will clear waivers soon. Looks like he's headed to Nashville.

On a positive note, Beyond the Box Score compares Matt LaPorta to Ryan Braun.

The Cub Reporter ranks Ben Sheets 4th among NL Central aces. He wants your vote to help rank them.

Or, if watching the Brewers is too much for you to handle sober, try out this drinking game. By the fifth or so, people will be stacking cups on your head.

On injuries:

Padres reliever Kevin Cameron is on the DL with an elbow strain.
Doug Davis is free of cancer. Sighs of relief all around.
Johnny Estrada is back on the DL with an inflamed nerve in his elbow.
Orlando Hernandez is no longer in a walking boot. He's one step closer to throwing the banana.
Dodgers P Esteban Loaiza is on the DL with spasms in his shoulder.
Nats C Paul Lo Duca has a broken hand and has been DL'ed.
Twins reliever Pat Neshek will have his elbow examined today after leaving last night's game.
Mets OF Angel Pagan is day-to-day with a bruised shoulder.
Braves P Brayan Pena is on the DL with a back strain.
Twins IF Nick Punto was scratched from last night's game with tightness in his hamstring.

Despite the hubbub about the Brewers only going as far as Prince Fielder will carry them, Recondite baseball notes that no Brewers make the list of top or bottom 20 in win-loss splits.

The Marlins are hot, but there's still plenty of great seats available at their games.

Reds Insider notes that new GM Walt Jocketty will get to rework his team in a hurry - the Reds will have 13 free agents after the season.

Here's video of Richie Sexson charging the mound last night. Two notes:

1) That pitch wasn't that close.
2) Richie, you're 6'6", did you really need to throw the helmet at the guy?

That's all for today. Drink up.

Many aspects of the 2008 Milwaukee Brewers are different from that of the '07 club, but the one that may end up having the biggest impact on the bottom line is the defensive realignment.  Since we have a day off (it's like a gift of three hours back in my life!) I thought I'd look at the issue from a variety of angles.

First, let's just think about what we've seen.  Four of the eight defensive positions are manned by the same folks who played there last year.  Of those, Hardy is solid, Hart is probably average with a plus arm, while Prince and Rickie are below average.  The only real change from last year is that I think Rickie is a little better--still making spectacular plays, still making mistakes on relatively easy plays, but doing the good things more often and the bad things less often.

The other four spots are big changes:

• Catcher: Kendall appears to be a huge improvement.  Maybe he'll stop being effective gunning down runners, but I can't even imagine anyone arguing that Kendall isn't a net plus in the field over Estrada.
• Third base: Bill Hall looks great.  I don't know whether he'll turn out to be above average, but if he's average, that's a massive gain over last year.
• Left field: I'm not sold on Braun being all that good, or even having the potential to be all that good out there, but at the same time, he's clearly not all that bad.  It isn't like sticking Jack Cust or Manny out there.  Regardless, it's a step down from Jenkins, and probably a big one, but not enough to offset the advantage of getting Braun off of third.
• Center field: I really wanted Hall to succeed in center last year, but it's pretty clear that he didn't.  We've already had three center fielders this year who looked better than Hall did at the position, and Mike Cameron hasn't played an inning yet.  This is a step up, and it's likely to get bigger.

Of course, you knew I wasn't going to stop there.  25 games is not really enough to do any serious statistical analysis of defense, but let's see what the numbers say anyway.

A good starting point for team defense is defensive efficiency, which is the fraction of batted balls that turn into outs.  Last year, the Brewers had a DefEff of .674, 14th out of 16 NL teams.  (Only the Rats and Fish were worse.)  This year we're at .711, 6th in the league.  You can always find DefEff in the "Miscellaneous Stats" section of Baseball-Reference's league pages .

Just doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations, I think that every .001 of DefEff is worth about 3 runs.  (I'm figuring .001 represents about 5 more batted balls turned into outs; if they are all fly balls, it's more like 4 or 5 runs; if they are grounders, it's 2-2.5.)  Viewed in this light, a DefEff increase of .037 would be astonishing: that's an improvement of over 100 runs, or about 10 wins.

That probably won't hold up over the course of the season, but even half that would be impressive.  It could also be partially attributable to the pitching, if they get more ground balls and infield flies.

Another place to look for defense indicators is the new-for-2008 Hardball Times Team Page.  Here are some of the things we can glean from today's report (it's updated daily):

• A fielding plus/minus of -1 suggests that we're about average.  I'll take it.
• We're near the bottom in RZR (the percent of "in zone" balls that are successfully fielded), but second best in the league at getting outs on balls out of zone.  That seems plausible to me: There have been plenty of great plays so far, but still our share of missed opportunities.
• The infield/outfield split is dramatic.  We're near the bottom as an infield, but 5th best as an outfield.  Cameron's return may help that go even higher.
• We're nearly best in the league in errors, and by far the best in the league in unearned runs.  (Since unearned runs are based in large part on errors, it's no surprise that those two go hand in hand.)  If you haven't noticed by now, I don't put a lot of stock in traditional fielding metrics such as errors and fielding percentage, because they are based on the subjective judgments of scorers.

That's probably enough for today.  It'll take many more games before we can make any kind of confident assessment of team defense this year, but even if we go with the more pessimistic view (represented by RZR), that the Brewers are roughly an average defensive team, that's a huge score for the good guys.  It's a testament to Melvin's offseason juggling, as well as the flexibility of Bill Hall and Ryan Braun.

Quick notes from around the web before I leave for another day on the road and the Sounds/Royals game in Omaha tomorrow. They wouldn't postpone a Sunday game because it's cold, would they? They did it last night.

Win Expectancy Graph
BR Box Score
BDD Recaps
BP Posteason Odds: 84.1 wins and 21.7%.

Quick rant to get us started: I hate the retro uniforms. Two reasons:

1) I think reliving the Ball-and-Glove Era has been ridiculously overdone in an effort to distract fans from what has frequently been a below-average on field product in the last decade. That's not necessary anymore.
2) It feels like we lose EVERY TIME we have a Retro Day. Does anyone have the stats on this?

Marlins P Scott Olsen was apparently displeased by the quality of the mound last night. Considering Gagne had to stop mid-inning to scrape crap out of his cleats, I'm guessing there's something to it.

But, on the positive side, statheads are calling the Kendall experience a success. It's still April, of course.

Speaking of statheads, TangoTiger has done the math and determined that an NL pitcher's value is based 86% on his pitching and 14% on his hitting. If those numbers are accurate, they put Ben Sheets' complete inability to hit (and nonchalance about it) in a slightly different perspective, at least for me.

Baseball Digest Daily thinks the Brewers could make a "franchise defining trade" by reaching out to the Indians re: C.C. Sabathia. It seems unlikely on pretty much every level. I think Two Fisted Slopper would suggest including Tony Gwynn in such a trade, though.

The Brewers are up in Minor League Ball's mock draft, and you can go vote on who they should take.

Brief Alphabetical Morning Injury Reports:

Jermaine Dye was held out of last night's game with a strained groin.
Troy Glaus left last night's Cardinals game. He's having difficulty seeing at night.
Orioles P Adam Loewen is on the DL with elbow soreness.
Gary Sheffield's shoulder problems reportedly have him considering retirement.

That's all I've got for today. Jeff will be filling in with the Plastic Cup tomorrow so I can get some sleep before the game/drive home. If you have something to include in a future Mug, drop it in the comments.

Drink up.